Integrations Archives

Update: SCOM web API

02/06/201715/11/2017
by Martin Ehrnst

Big updates:

I have made a lot of changes to the SCOM web API. As you can see from the picture above. Maintenance scheduling is added, which means you can create a new maintenance schedule in SCOM 2016. To the computer endpoints I have added the a possibility to get detailed information. This will list all related object to the server. Logical disks, network cards etc.

These are the API endpoints available at the moment:

Agents

Route	Description
[GET] API/Agents	Gets all agents
[GET] API/Agents/{id}	Get a single agent

Alerts

Route	Description
[GET] API/Alerts	Gets all open alerts
[GET] API/Alert/{id}	Get a single alert
[PUT] API/Alert	Update the specified alert with resolution state, TicketId
[GET] API/Alert/{ComputerName}	Get all alert from specific computer, use IncClosed=true to include open and closed alerts

Computer

Route	Description
[GET] API/Computer/Windows	Get all windows computers wit basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Windows/{ComputerName}	Get A single windows computers with basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Windows/{ComputerName}/Detailed	Get A single windows computers with hosted child objects
——	——
[GET] API/Computer/Linux	Get all Linux computers wit basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Linux/{ComputerName}	Get A single Linux computer with basic properties
[GET] API/Computer/Linux/{ComputerName}/Detailed	Get A single Linux computers with hosted child objects

Maintenance

Route	Description
[POST] API/ComputerMaintenance	Put the specific computer object and all child in maintenance mode
[POST] API/ObjectMaintenance	Put the specific monitoring object and all child in maintenance mode
[POST] API/MaintenanceSchedule	Create a new maintenance schedule. SCOM 2016 ONLY

Object

Route	Description
[GET] API/MonitoringObject/{id}	Get a monitoring object and all child object

Examples

Create a new maintenance schedule by sending a post to /API/MaintenanceSchedule with a body including object id, start date and end date in UTC, optionally a comment.

#CREATE A MAINTENANCE SCHEDULE WITH TWO OBJECTS. Time in UTC

$body = @"
{
  "scheduleName": "new maintenance schedule",
  "id": "a43a5b09-5c32-8624-1427-73b8e1f05248",
  "StartTime": "2017-05-30T13:53:33.550Z",
  "EndTime": "2017-05-30T14:53:33.550Z",
  "comment": "TicketID"
}
"@


Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'http://localhost:64049/API/MaintenanceSchedule' -Method Post -Body $body -UseDefaultCredentials -ContentType 'Application/json'

Get details/related object from a computer:

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri 'https://host/API/Computer/windows/computer.fqdn/Detailed' -UseDefaultCredentials

Which will return something like this. Notice the relatedObjectsCount and relatedObjects

Automation

SCOM Alerts to Microsoft Teams and Mattermost

06/01/201706/01/2017
by Martin Ehrnst

…or slack?

For a SCOM 2016 implementation I have worked around different methods to consume alerts. Keeping emails to an absolute minimum and add more smartness to alerts and incidents is one of the main goals.

On a daily basis we use custom dashboards created with SquaredUp and integrated this with our ticketing and CMDB systems, allowing us to create alert tickets directly from SCOM on the connected to the correct server/person/customer etc. (Sounds like a great blog post down the road)

On the concept side of things, it shouldnt matter what system you use to handle alerts as long as someone takes action on it. So in this blog post I will show how you can ‘interact’ or at least notify on alerts with two collaboration tools. Microsoft Teams and Mattermost.

This example uses SCOM as the alert source, but it could easially be another monitoring system, Solarwinds, OMS, Datadog etc.

The main technique involves Webhooks which i used when sending alerts to Azure Automation, and is somewhat the same thing we are doing here.

On a high level, this is what we are going through.

Creating Channels in MSFT Teams and Mattermost
enabling them to receive incoming webhooks
Create a new SCOM command channel
- Add the PS script to send alerts

In teams, create a new channel by clicking the three bullets.( If you want to use an existing channel feel free).

After naming your channel, create a webhook for it by adding a new connector, and configure it.

Set a name and maybe an image, and remember to copy your URL.

In SCOM create a new command channel

You will ned the full path to powershell as the command file, which is:

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowershell\v1.0\Powershell.exe

And the startup folder

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowershell\v1.0\

The command line parameters are basicly a powershell script writtes as a ‘one-liner’ after the command parameter.

I will break it down for you here.

-executionpolicy Unrestricted -Command " &{Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri 'https://outlook.office365.com/webhook/************'

We are setting the execution policy and starting powershell with a command. The first “section” is a post to your webhook url.

Second, as the body i create a hash-table which holds our data and convert it to Json. For readability I have stripped down the code a little. We will insert data from SCOM here in the end.

-Body (ConvertTo-Json -InputObject @{'Title'='The title';'Text'='[View alert in SCOM Web console](https://scom)'}) -ErrorAction Stop}"

After you have created the command channel. Continue to add a new subscriber and a new subscription. When an alert matching your criteria is triggered you will se the following in your teams channel.

Success!

Mattermost: Using integrations from the menu. Create a new webhook assigned to the channel you want. Copy the webhook URL to use in your script, which for mattermost looks like this (should be somewhat equal to Slack). Not much changed from Teams.

 -Body (ConvertTo-Json -InputObject @{'text'='alertname [View alert in SCOM](https://yoururl)';'username'='SCOM Alerts'}) -ContentType application/json  -ErrorAction Stop}"

Please note that everything goes under ‘text’ and I have added a content type in our request as well an override for the poster username.

If all went well you should see a result like this:

Here are the two commands for each channel with SCOM data

Teams:

-executionpolicy Unrestricted -Command " &{Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri 'https://outlook.office365.com/*****' -Body (ConvertTo-Json -InputObject @{'Title'='$Data[Default='Not Present']/Context/DataItem/ManagedEntityPath$\$Data[Default='Not Present']/Context/DataItem/ManagedEntityDisplayName$ : $Data[Default='Not Present']/Context/DataItem/AlertName$';'Text'='[View alert in SCOM Web console](https://URL/$Data/Context/DataItem/AlertId$)'}) -ErrorAction Stop}"

Mattermost:

-executionpolicy Unrestricted -Command " &{Invoke-RestMethod -Method Post -Uri 'https://mattermost/hooks/*******' -Body (ConvertTo-Json -InputObject @{'text'='$Data[Default='Not Present']/Context/DataItem/AlertName$ : $Data[Default='Not Present']/Context/DataItem/ManagedEntityPath$\$Data[Default='Not Present']/Context/DataItem/ManagedEntityDisplayName$ [View alert in SCOM](https://URLid=$Data/Context/DataItem/AlertId$)';'username'='SCOM Alerts'}) -ContentType application/json  -ErrorAction Stop}"

Notes:

As you see I have put the scripts which handles the logic in a powershell onliner, inside a SCOM channel.

The next thin I want to do is to add more logic to the messages posted in Teams/Slack/Mattermost like taking actions etc.

To do this i will move the code out of scom and probably trigger an external script that does the logic. It could run serverless in azure functions, AWS Lambda, in azure automation, SMA or what ever you chose. I am looking to accomplish something like this and will of course let you know when its done.

from Slack documentation

References

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/connectors

https://docs.mattermost.com/developer/webhooks-incoming.html